I had a perpetual block placed on my MyGov account, which no one on the telephone service was authorized to clear (they kept reporting the 'unusual' error report of "classification access status denied" when trying to alter the block).
This meant that it wasn't until I got hold of the 'right' person in February whom removed the block, and allowed access to the MyGov account for Centrelink.
Pursuant to that, this meant that I was unable to even FIND details on the debt, let alone utilise my democratic right to the appeals process, or correct their records in the timeframe they 'generously' gave to me.
There was no point ringing through the phonelines, because they could do nothing except point me to the bloody inactive MyGov linked service (MyGov itself was working fine, for other services).
Having ZERO avenues of either correcting the record, or appealing anything, I let it go ... as I could not go any further with it anyway.
This shit me no end!
Fast forward to 31 January 2017
The debt repayments, coming when they did on the last day of January, 2017, meant a deferral in payments for textbooks and other study materials for my university course which was due to start on 20 February.
I had payments all set out, and budgeted, so that I would have all my main textbooks, and close to all of my other study materials, ready for that date, by that date.
When the debt repayments started being automatically taken out, this threw that all out the window, as I did have it all planned ... down to a few dollars and cents left over.
The government handled this process abysmally, as they were entirely reliant on the online process, and over-the-phone corrections were not an option, as the debt process was entirely automated, and manual corrections were removed for the first time during this process.